


A Demain Paris

by bellafeine (BellaFeine)



Category: Bleach
Genre: Drunkenness, Love, M/M, Melancholy, Paris (City)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-26
Updated: 2014-04-27
Packaged: 2018-01-20 22:15:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,053
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1527623
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BellaFeine/pseuds/bellafeine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars (Wilde)<br/>Ichigo is moping around Paris, depressed and drunk and generally unhappy. Spleen and mal de vivre. Yet a random encounter with a certain blue-haired Frenchman leaves him with...hope for tomorrow. Oneshot in two parts. M because...well slash.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. La Première journée

** A demain, Paris **

 

  1. **We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars**



_Il faut être toujours ivre. Pour ne pas sentir l'horrible fardeau du temps qui brise nos épaules, il faut s'enivrer sans trêve. De vin, de poésie ou de vertu, à votre guise. Mais enivrez-vous!_

–        **_Charles Baudelaire_**

 

 

I stumbled out of the cafe into the encroaching shadows of the autumn twilight, my head spinning more than was probably reasonable, my mind blurred and vague from too many glasses of cheap wine.

The air was cool and fresh against my flushed flesh and as I looked up I saw the moon hanging silvery and ethereal in the sky.

I scoffed at it and looked down at the chewing-gum patterned tarmac at my feet. Much more suited to my mood.

Once upon a time the moon was magical and mystical and held a myriad of untold secrets. Now it was but a thing that waxed and waned as it hung limply in the sky, a celestial body signalling the passage of time. Nothing more, nothing less.

Time. Something I had too much of and she had none of. I had been depressed for a while, but that soon faded and now I found myself wondering the streets of the city she loved but a jaded husk, carrying her memory.

I hadn't even lived in the city for years. No, I fled to the country of my birth long ago, leaving Paris and France far behind. I fled as far as possible, across the ocean to a city so unlike this one it almost funny. New York was new where Paris was old, was fast where Paris was laissez-faire, was shiny as Paris was scuffed.

And that's the way I liked it.

And yet I still...this year I had taken the leap and made the trek to the place she had so loved to visit her grave.

It was in Pierre Lachaise. You may have heard of it. It's a pretty famous cemetery, but she was allowed to be buried there because she had been well-known and beautiful, and above all had died in the city.

And now I was in that same city.

My editor Rukia said it showed progress. My sister Karin said it was about time I grew some balls. Her twin Yuzu scolded her but was smiling all the same. My dad cried and said I had finally grown up. Rukia's boyfriend Renji said I should pick up some "hot French tail" whilst I was here.

Um, yeah.

I'm not sure if any of them were correct. I mean...I had been here for a whole day and still hadn't managed to go anywhere near the cemetery.

All I had managed to was get plastered.

I checked my watch: 17:47. Wow, and it wasn't even all that late. I suppose that's what happens when you start drinking at 11:30 in the morning.

Whatever. I ignored the tourists wandering around, wondering what sites to visit. Screw them. Suddenly, I didn't want to be here anymore. I wanted to be back in New York, in my tiny, brand new apartment, alone with a bottle of wine and re-watching season one of Dexter. I didn't want to be in the city of love as a single person. I didn't want to be in this place so full of history that each step was making my heart swell. Nope. I would just go back to my room in that little hotel near Montmartre, and close the blinds, order room service, and watch some crap on TV.

Maybe porn. I mean...it’s not like anyone had come with me. And let's face it; I had been single for three years. That wasn't about to change anytime soon.

I shuffled my way to the nearest metro station and blearily made my way to the right platform. Seriously, the lines could be like a fucking maze. Luckily I knew the way.

The ride was mercifully quick because the feeling of being squashed was making the wine slosh around uncomfortably in my stomach. Maybe it had been too cheap. I hurried out of the doors and up the stairs, pushing past people without a word in my haste to get some fresh air again.

The coolness it me with a blast and I found myself heaving next to some large brown bins. Judging from the smells I was at the back of a restaurant. They were, in all fairness, delicious smells, but my uneasy stomach was misinterpreting them. I slowly emptied my guts, the acid of the alcohol making my eyes sting and burning my throat as it came back up.

Suddenly the door behind me opened and a man in a white chef coat and grey hairnet stepped out, cigarette between his lips.

His eyes widened slightly as he realised there was an intruder on his cigarette break. He garbled something in French, his voice deep and slightly husky.

I stared at him for a second before dry-heaving again, bracing myself against the wall.

"Ca va?" he asked me, forehead slightly creased in concern. I realised he had the most gorgeous blue eyes I had ever seen.

I nodded and wiped my mouth on the back of my coat sleeve.

"Attends ici," he gestured briefly before disappearing back through the steel door.

I looked at my watch again: 19:57. Huh, time must fly when you're throwing up.

The blue-eyed Frenchman reappeared, this time with a glass of water. He held it out to me as I eyed him suspiciously.

In New York, no matter what the situation, I would never drink a glass of something offered to me by a stranger. I would even hesitate at an unopened bottle of water.

"Bois-le!" He thrust it into face.

I slowly shook my head and turned to go.

"Wait!"

I twirled around, eyes wide at the English word. Seriously, the French believe their language is a precious heritage and should be nurtured and spoken at all times within the country. Their pride does not usually allow them to condescend to speak the inferior English (which they believe unjustly usurped French as the Lingua Franca.). I rant for a living. That is one of my favourites.

I simply raised an orange eyebrow in question.

"Drink it. You will feel better," his voice sounded even better as his accent caressed the hard consonants of English. Holy crap was I getting turned on by a voice? I just wanted to spread it on my toast in the morning.

Against my better judgement I took the water. The lukewarm liquid soothed my raw throat and settled pleasantly in my very empty stomach. In fact it settled too well, and produced a strangely loud and rather obnoxious gurgling sound.

I felt a blush rise up my neck as the Frenchman in front of me snickered.

"You are hungry?" he questioned, a slight smirk on his face.

I nodded once more, rubbing the back of my neck.

"I finish in..." he looked at his watch, "I finish now. I will grab you a _pain_ and walk you to your hotel, ok _mon roux_?"

Maybe it was the wine that was making me like this or maybe it was that fact that his voice had a mesmerising quality to it that I didn't have the strength to fight, but I simply found myself nodding again.

He disappeared once more through that steel door. I found myself wondering what was, in fact, on the other side. Then his words registered and I scowled to myself. I am pretty sure he just called me ginger. Nobody gets to call me that and get away with it.

 My unruly tangerine locks have long been a source of ridicule or admiration from others, and I never quite understood their fascination, I mean, it's only hair for fuck's sake -

 The door reopened and my mouth dropped of its own accord.

 I take it all back. Hair can be exquisite and fascinating and sexy.

 Oh my God.

 The Frenchman with the perfect cerulean eyes had reappeared, a dark brown leather jacket and jeans adorning his lean figure.

 But that wasn't what made my jaw drop. Oh no.

 His hair. His hair was blue as an azure sky in the deepest summer, as an opal held up and caught in the glimmering rays of sun, as the shimmering stillness of an untouched lake in the mountains. Of a pure blue that caught the glimmers of light that the city offered us at this time in the evening and robbed me of all thought and breath and all life. Blue.

 "Are you ok?" he repeated, finally lighting his cigarette and taking a drag.

 I nodded dumbly as he took me by the arm and steered me out into the main street.

 The quartier of Montmartre was bustling with food and laughter and music and I don't know how I couldn't hear any of it considering I had only been a few metres away. I guess I had just been too preoccupied.

 The square was like a fairground. Artists lined the streets, painting portraits and drawing caricatures for tourists with too much money and time. Waiters flitted in and out of the restaurants, bringing out plates and bringing in tips, reminding me of magpies. It smelt like bread and fried food and to my right a man was selling crepes out of a van, slathered in an ungodly amount of chocolate.

My stomach clenched at the thought of food just as my blue-haired companion spoke again.

"So where are you staying?" he looked at me out of the corner of those sapphire eyes and handing me a sandwich.

It looked as though he had taken half a baguette and shoved a tomato and some ham inside it. As my teeth sank into the crisp crust with a satisfying crunch, I realised just how very hungry I was. The inside was soft and fluffy and the tomatoes decadently sumptuous. I felt something running down my chin but before I could bring up my other hand to wipe it another was doing it in my stead.

 As the pad of his thick calloused thumb slid across my chin I suppressed a shiver. I swallowed my mouthful and he stepped back as though he had never been up and in my personal space.

 I began to walk in the direction of my hotel, weaving in and out of the throngs of people, concentrating more on eating than where I was going. My companion kept in step, lighting up another cigarette as we continued in a surprisingly comfortable silence.

 Soon enough we were in front of my hotel and the sandwich was but a fond memory. I turned to thank him but once again my words were caught in throat as I looked him in the eye.

 Those depths captivated me, streaming and blazing in the night, illuminated from within. Time slowed to treacle and I felt as though I were falling into an abyss. Glittering with an unearthly flare and glare, in that instant the blue haired man was so unbearably, hauntingly beautiful that I forgot how to breathe.

 And then he blinked and the spell was broken and once again the night was but the night and the moon was only the moon and his eyes were just orbs that he saw me through.

 I was just me, outside my hotel, in the city my mother died in and I still hadn't visited her grave. I was still the coward I had always been and probably always would be and I still thought there was no point to anything. The abyss was still there but no longer mysterious, simply a deep dark pit of nothingness. God was nothing and nothing was God.

 And then he kissed my hand.

 And the fireworks were back.

 "Bonsoir et bon courage." He murmured against my skin, his lips soft as petals and his breath a warm caress.

 "Est-ce-que je peux avoir au moins ton prénom?" the husky voice continued, that tongue curving around the words and leaving the ends hanging.

 "Ichigo." I said, my own voice surprising me with its strength.

 "Et moi, je suis Grimmjow. Grimmjow Jaegerjaques," he smirked languidly at me before uttering a phrase that made my heart flutter.

 "A demain, Ichigo," he tilted his head at before turning on his heel and disappearing down the road and into the night.

 It was only as I floated up the stairs to my room that I realised throughout the whole encounter I had only uttered one word. My name.

 "See you tomorrow."

 Those words echoed in my mind and suddenly the city didn't seem as bad as I remembered. The whole day had been unreal, and as I lay down to go to sleep, I simply hoped it hadn't all been an alcohol induced dream.

 "A demain," I murmured before falling asleep.


	2. Deuxième Journée

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars (Wilde)  
> Ichigo is moping around Paris, depressed and drunk and generally unhappy. Spleen and mal de vivre. Yet a random encounter with a certain blue-haired Frenchman leaves him with...hope for tomorrow. Oneshot in two parts. M because...well slash.

** A demain, Paris **

**2.** **We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars**

 

_A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world._

 _- **Oscar Wilde**_

 

Hello again Paris.

I know that in this city I’m a stranger. And a foreigner. In French they only have one word that means both things. _Etranger._

Strange, huh?

 I sit leaning against bridge railings, once again drunk, once again watching the sky darken from blue to grey. The pavement feels cold and hard through my jeans, but it also feels solid and familiar. It feels like a friend in comparison to the river flowing beneath my legs as they dangle through the iron railings, its autumn currents dark and deep and frigid.

In a moment of lemming-like clarity, I wonder briefly what it would be like to fall into it. Probably wouldn’t change much, it would still be cold and desolate and would ultimately move on without me.

The French have a saying for that _. L’appel du vide_.

“The call of the void” is the literal translation, but it’s really used to describe the instinctive urge to jump from high places.

I imagine my lungs burning from the lack of oxygen and my world turning silent as the echoes of the city were drowned out by the rush of water.

Shaking my head, I took another swig of the small bottle of whiskey the man in the tiny supermarket had been so kind as to sell me.

The bourbon was warm as it slid down, a semblance of heat trickling through my frozen countenance. It reminds me of sinking into a hot bath after being out on a frozen winter’s day.

The city doesn’t sleep. There are still people wandering around, busy with their lives, busy with living.

I can’t sleep either. But I’m not busy like the others. I’m simply…existing.

People barely spare me a second glance as they walk by, just a strange-haired stranger, sitting by the river.

I’m getting purposely drunk again. Not fast enough for my liking either.

I spent the first half of my day in a happy daze, put into an inordinately good mood by my wonderful encounter the day before with the blue-haired God who guided me back to my hotel and stole my breath.

By lunchtime, I had figured out that it was most probably a liquor induced hallucination, and I had used it to curb my loneliness and to feel something, anything, again.

This city brings out the worst in me.

I think about what a waste it was coming here. It is a depressingly beautiful crisp autumn evening, and the beauty just makes me want to drink even more. The beauty reminds me why I’m here, what I’m supposed to do, what I made plans for.

I debate getting up and moving around as my fingers are becoming number as the minutes stumble by and in the end the fact that my bottle is nearly empty makes the decision for me.

I get up, swaying slightly. The iron of the railings is cool beneath my fingers that clasped it in a death grip as I gathered my bearings. Deciding to make my way back to the main square, I let got, wiping the bits of black paint that had flaked off onto my palms on my jeans.

I somehow manage to procure a bottle of red wine and get the guy at the café to open it for me. I do like the fact that alcohol is practically revered in this country. I meander around the back alleys, not really trying to go back to my hotel, yet not straying too from it far either.

Slowly, muffled sounds of shouting reach my ears. Curious and with nothing better to do, I make my way toward the yells. The darkness grows as I get further from the main square and soon mostly all I can see are shadows. As I approach, it becomes apparent that two men are arguing vehemently about something. Their harsh voices cut through the brisk night air and I stop as I realise it is coming from a familiar backdoor that is slightly ajar, a thin ray of light spilling into the dark alley.

I stand on the pavement and wonder why that door seems so particularly familiar. In fact, the whole place gives me an intense feeling of déjà-vu. But before I can put my finger on it, said door crashes open and a man wearing a chef coat and jeans storms out. The heavy door crashes shuts behind him and my eyes have to adjust to the darkness once again.

I take a swig of my wine for good measure, and watch the man curiously. Back towards me, he doesn’t notice this scrutiny.

“Putain de bordel de merde!” he growls out, special emphasis being put on the end of the last word. His voice makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up and for some unknown reason that angry snarl also makes heat shoot straight to my groin.

The man proceeds to rip off his white jacket and throw it into the nearby dumpsters. Then, to my utmost astonishment, begins to lay into said bins with ferocious fervour.

The thuds of his black boots denting the poor plastic echo up and down the street, the only sound louder than that is his own harsh swearing.

I watch, wide-eyed and rooted to the spot as he slowly calms down, his anger apparently sated when a couple of the wheels fall off said poor rubbish recipient and it sags sadly to the left, spewing various food stuffs onto the cobbles that lined this street.

His breath comes out in harsh pants and his shoulders are hunched forward in a defensive position. Then with another rough snarl he swirls around, planting his fist into the brick wall.

Our eyes connect and suddenly all my breath leaves my body.

It was my hallucination from yesterday.

We both freeze, eyes comically wide.

“Bonjour,” I spout out stupidly, wanting to break to awkward silence, but not really.

His eyes like blue fire are still boring holes into me, and so I offer up the wine as a peace offering.

“Want some?”

He slowly lowers his fist, orange brick crumbling to the ground as he removes it from the wall. I’m impressed that he managed to dent it, a small crater clearly visible amongst the mortar.

His hand is bleeding, obviously, as he just punched a wall. His fingers flex, once, twice and then he comes close enough to take to bottle from my hand.

I watch as his lips close around the dark green rim and he takes a long swig, his eyes shut, his chest swelling as his inhales deeply through his nose, some of the burgundy liquid escaping and snaking its way from the corner of his lips to his chin.

That small trail of maroon bothers me more than it should, and before I know it I’ve wiped it away with a flick of my thumb.

Blue, darkly, deeply, beautifully blue, blue eyes snap open, but I simply keep my face neutral. I haven’t moved from my old position.

He lowers the wine and lets it hang loosely, grasped by the neck between two fingers. For some reason this turns me on.

I’ve never seen someone hold a wine bottle so sexily before.

His grin catches the light as he grabs a cigarette from a packet in his pocket. Placing it between his lips he lights it. His canines are white and pointy and I just want to lick them.

I sway slightly on the spot, thinking I may have a heart attack.

Every movement this man makes causes my stomach to smoulder and my heart to hurt and my muscles to mel **t.**

“Bonsoir,” he nods in my direction, “Ichigo.”

He remembers my name. So last night was actually real.

“How are you?” I ask pointedly, the question encompassing the fact he just unfurled his considerable wrath onto the rubbish bins, the fact he was bleeding down that wine bottle he held ever so sexily, and the fact I had nothing better to say.

“Ca va,” he replies with a nonchalant shrug of his shoulders, turning away from me.

My heart stands still as I watch his broad back walk away from me. My mind is screaming – shit what no where are you going come back sorry let me at least kiss you before you go –

Then he is back again, and all he had done was wipe his bloody knuckles on his previously pure white jacket.

He offers the now clean bottle to me and I take it. He begins to walk out of the alley, retracing our steps, and I follow him, not really having much of a choice as his mere presence makes me feel as though I had been hypnotised into following him for all eternity.

“So, I think I have a word to describe you,” he says, taking a drag from his cigarette and glancing at me out of the corner of his eyes.

“Yeah?” I in turn take a swig of wine, the slightly vinegary taste bringing me out of my blue induced daze. Somewhat.

“Yeah. You’re an inversed flâneur.” He says it with a kind of serious mockery, his eyes dancing once again in the half lights of a city at night.

My brows furrow. This was a word I didn’t know. I am an upside-down … flan? He was calling me a floppy pastry? That couldn’t be right…

I look at him, and he looks at me. His grin is infectious, but I’m not one to smile easily. It falls slightly from his face and he turns away as he explains.

“Flâner. It is the art of leisurely strolling the streets of Paris, without any particular goal or destination, simply for the pleasure of soaking up the beauty of the city. But you…you don’t seem to do it for pleasure. You walk around, you get the beauty, you really get it…but no pleasure. So, you’re an inverse flâneur.”

I snort to myself and keep on walking.

This man…a poet and a beast. And a chef apparently. Just what I needed to take my mind of my actual goal.

He follows me, a slight frown of his own beginning.

“Are you insulted?”

I shake my head, taking another swig of wine only to find the bottle was empty. My feet have led me unknowingly back to the hotel, and now I stand in front of the entrance.

“Good.”

He puts his hands in his jean pockets and we both stand on the sidewalk for a minute, just looking anywhere but each other.

“I got fired.” He finally says, “I really loved that job and I messed it up. I love to cook. I want it to be,” he unearths a hand from its cave and waves it around as if to explain, “an amalgam of creativity and cooking, to be artistic and culinary at the same time.”

A real poet. His eyes are animated as he talks about food so passionately. I used to have that passion, I think.

“And in a place like this, like Paris, inspiration simply sweats out of the walls. I mean, that isn’t the right word, but you know, don’t you?”

He reminds me of her. Her passion and joy and fire and love of this city.

My eyes tear slightly and I blink.

I fucked up big this time. This vision is standing before me and I’m not even worthy to be talking to someone this amazing.

His mouth is moving and his lips are mesmerising. Heat seems to emanate from his very being, making my ears tinge and extremities tingle.

In my ears I could hear the throbbing drums of my own blood. Blood like great crimson pulsing tides of wine in my veins, surging and foaming and fretting within my body, making my face flush and heat gather everywhere but especially in the pit of my stomach.

God, his passion turns me on.

I have to get away from him.

He has stopped talking and has somehow got closer to me.

“I see fire in your eyes, you know,” he whispers somewhere above my head, close to my already heated ears.

“No.” I say.

“Oui.” The word caresses my ears.

“Non,” my voice is scarcely audible.

“Si,” his rebuttal is barley there.

But he is there and his hand is on my cheek and mine are in his hair and the passion that he has is flowing into me. Or out of me. Or us. Or something.

And he pushes me against the railing of the hotel, or I pull him, and the sky is dark, so dark despite the light pollution that stars are visible, or maybe that is just lights exploding like a super nova behind my closed eyelids because my eyes are now shut.

His lips find mine and they are hot and heady like lilac wine on midsummer's eve. Slanted across my own they brand me with his blue fire, that flame in his eyes that never goes out.

We stumble through the entrance and smash into the reception, still attached. We stumble up the stairs and smash into the railings, still attached. We stumble into my room and smash against the bed, still attached.

My legs buckle and I pull him vehemently down on top of me, his weight coming down full force. His teeth cut my lips and I taste iron and wine.

And our clothes come off in what could be an eternity or mere seconds and I touch his skin and he touches mine. The beauty that is this man takes what little breath I had away and I pause a second to look, to really look.

He is utterly gorgeous, and I flip him so he is lying on his back on the horrible salmon coloured bedspread. He makes it look as though it belongs in the Louvre, a precious work of art.

And then he brings our lips back together and we continue in our symphony, somehow moving in harmony, somehow building like a crescendo played by a pianist at the peak of his career.

And my heart can’t take it anymore, and it feels as though it will beat out of my chest, because his touch is electric and giving me shocks and his lips are ecstasy.

And then he enters me and we move as one and I feel whole, I feel complete, as though something was broken and now, only now, is it fixed.

And hot tears come down my face in salty tracks and his moans and mine are mixed, and I can’t take it anymore.

He is whispering my name like a mantra and his hands are touching me as though I am precious and I finally say his, bringing myself down on him as hard as I can, as fast as I can, as passionately as I can.

“Grimmjow,” my mouth forms his name as though I were saying a prayer, and his eyes find mine.

“Hah…” he moans, breath coming out in sharp pants.

And again those depths captivate me, streaming and blazing in the almost darkness, illuminated from within. Time slows to treacle and I feel as though I’m falling into an abyss.

Not an abyss any longer, just a freefall into nothing and everything and it is so amazingly, heart breakingly wonderful. My heart swells and breaks and everything hardens to one sharp point as I reach my limit.

“Grimmjow,” I cry brokenly, and he thrusts up into me as my eyes screw shut and the world simply stops.

I am nothing. I am everything. I feel and swell and unfurl into a million little pieces that come together as I distantly hear a cracked cry from the man beneath me as he climaxes too.

We pant and breathe and pant and breathe as I slide into a lying position next to him on that horrible salmon bedspread.

He kisses me again and murmurs my name. This passionate God who unravels me when I thought I was but a shell of nothing. Who knows nothing of me but my name.

Then I remember I thought he called me a flan.

An upside-down flan.

And a bright laugh cannot help but bubble out of me, a sound that I haven’t made since the last time I was in this city, a sound no one has heard for many years.

I laugh until more tears stream down my cheeks and I begin to hyperventilate.

Grimmjow holds me and grins from ear to ear, murmuring random nothings in French.

 “See. You can find pleasure in this city.”

 I only look at him, cheeks warm and eyes shimmering. His breath catches and my heart flutters strangely in my chest.

 Maybe tomorrow I will do what I set out to do.

 As the symphony winds down and the last notes fade out, the light of dawn filters through the unwashed panes of the window.

 And I smile.

 “A demain, Paris.”

 

**~FIN~**

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. _Il faut être toujours ivre. Pour ne pas sentir l'horrible fardeau du temps qui brise nos épaules, il faut s'enivrer sans trêve. De vin, de poésie ou de vertu, à votre guise. Mais enivrez-vous!_
> 
> You have to be always drunk. That's all there is to it—it's the only way. So as not to feel the horrible burden of time that breaks your back and bends you to the earth, you have to be continually drunk. But on what? Wine, poetry or virtue, as you wish. But be drunk.


End file.
